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paper afloat for another year.’ Then he smiled. ‘So a bad day for you, because the killer won’t be coming your way, even when they catch him. Conflict of interest.’
    ‘I’ll worry about my ethics,’ Charlie said, even though his brain was still trying to take in what had been said.
    Billy Privett had been all over the press for the last year, public enemy number one, the lottery winner with no class versus the poor but noble dead girl’s father.
    Billy had played up to his image, knew that people were jealous of his money, and so he wanted to make sure everyone knew how much he had. Parties, cars, gold chains around his neck, diamonds in his teeth. The press loved him, even though they painted him as a hate figure, because someone to hate sells newspapers.
    He’d been heading for a life of crime before the big win. Charlie had represented him before he made it rich with those magic six numbers. Billy had collected his winner’s cheque with an electronic tag on his leg, and he’d had to race back to Oulton before the curfew kicked in. Once the money arrived, Amelia represented him, because she was more ruthless with her billing, and looked better than Charlie whenever she spoke to the press.
    But it was the girl that defined him. Alice Kenyon. Going places, from a good family, but ended up as the victim of a brutal sexual assault and found drowned in Billy’s pool at the end of another wild party. Alice’s father kept her name in the paper, campaigned for those who were at the party to speak out, but no one did.
    Alice’s father found out the downside to fame, that a small moment of stupidity makes the front pages. Caught with a young woman in a car, he went from sympathy figure to pervert, and so the public clamour for answers about Alice died down.
    Charlie was still thinking about Billy Privett when he realised that the prosecutor was still talking. ‘Amelia will get some publicity though, and so it all works out. Except for Billy, that is.’
    Charlie nodded, just to get himself back into the conversation. ‘People like to go to a name they recognise.’ He lifted up his files. ‘And I could do with some better clientele.’
    ‘Doesn’t Amelia bring it in? Some of the rough trade we get in here must like a touch of glamour.’ He looked down at Charlie’s clothes. ‘No offence, Charlie, but you’re breaking mirrors these days.’
    ‘None taken,’ Charlie said, and the wrinkle of the prosecutor’s nose told him that Donia was right, that the mints weren’t working. ‘Amelia brings the work in that I can’t. Most of my punters don’t win, know that they have no chance against the system, and so they might as well look at someone nice before they lose.’
    ‘And how do you find it? Distracting?’
    ‘Not my type,’ he said, lying. He didn’t fall for Amelia’s tease, but he had looked at her body for too long and too often when she didn’t realise he was staring. Or maybe she did but didn’t mind. Someone told him once that women always notice men looking. That hadn’t stopped him looking. It just made him stop apologising. ‘Are you sure it’s Billy Privett?’
    ‘No, but that’s just what I’ve heard.’
    Charlie sighed. ‘Murder cases are hassle anyway. If you foul it up, your name is dragged through the Court of Appeal. I don’t want that. Let someone else have it.’ And then he stepped away, knowing that there was no need to spend time in the police station. He would be back at the office in an hour, with just Amelia’s disapproving glances to get him through the day.

Chapter Eight
     
    John emerged from the bedroom and made his way downstairs to the kitchen. He had slept better for sharing a mattress with Gemma, rather than the bunks in the other rooms.
    The stairs descended into the hallway by the front door, with the living room in the middle of the house. The floor was still strewn with spilled ashtrays and empty vodka bottles from the night before. There was a large